Sunday, October 15, 2017

Two year-old No. 3 and I just got back from our walk around the block. She’s learning new words daily, and occasionally throwing out wholly formed sentences just for the fun of it. She doesn’t notice it’s the big deal everyone else thinks it is.

As we started our walk, I thought she was saying no stars, no stars since the sun had just set, and there weren’t any stars out yet. Instead, what she was doing was checking each driveway for moving cars, and saying “No cars, no cars.” She and the rest of the gang have been practicing this game every time they go somewhere to make sure they don’t get hit by someone pulling their car out of their driveway and across the sidewalk.

As we hit our first corner, No 3 began to tell me how she had fallen and, “Toes hurt.”

“Your toes hurt?”

“Yeah. It’s OK though.”

“Why do your toes hurt?”

“I fell.” Here, 3 launhes into a pantomime waving her arms at head level, and then making a crashing noise. “It’s OK though. I landed on my backpack.’

“Oh! You mean when you and I fell?” No. 3 and I had a tumbe two weeks back to the day, when with her on my shoulders the gang and I made a dash for the bus. Everything happened in slow motion after my foot got caught in the sidewalk. I reached up, got 3 off my shoulders, and held her by the arm as I fell. Realizing she was going to fall at the same speed I was, I let go of her arm, grabbed her thigh, and heaved her upward to slow her fall. As we approached the ground, I was able to push her a little tiny bit horizontally so she came down in front of me with her head landing on her backpack. We were both fine, albeit a bit rattled. As falls go, it was a thing of beauty! We got up, caught the bus, and made it to our dropoff point with Mom-person where I related the above story.

No. .3 started back in, “Yeah, we fell, but I was OK. I landed on my backpack!”

“You did, didn’t you? You did great! You were OK!”

“Yeah!”

We’d reched the second corner, and rounded it during our discussion. We came up on a house that had turquoise trim on all the windows.

“Pretty!”

“It is pretty, isn’t it? It’s turquoise. Can you say turquoise?”

“Turquoise!” 3 nailed it!

A little further on, we came to the house with the pink stuffed lion out front. 3 pointed it out.

“Lion!”

“Yeah!”

“I saw it 1 day ago,” she said holding up one finger.

Between you and I, we went for our last walk aorund the block two days ago, but I just carried on. “One day ago?”

“Yeah!”... she thought for a moment, “No! Two days ago!”

“Yeah, it was two days ago!”

“We were making a loop! A loop and back to the house!”

I might have told 3 we were making a loop. I can’t remember, but what a great word! Loop!

We returned to find six year-old No. 1 making her own Halloween decorations. “This is the first year I’ve made my own decorations!”